


while away the time a little

by stillmadaboutpetra



Series: appropriate ways to care for your local witcher [4]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Banter, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Dominant Eskel (The Witcher), Frottage, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:53:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25860004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: Eskel and Jaskier exchange kisses and words while waiting for Geralt to return back to camp.
Relationships: Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Eskel/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Eskel/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: appropriate ways to care for your local witcher [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1762969
Comments: 61
Kudos: 398





	while away the time a little

All men are made more handsome by firelight. It is the law of light. It is a law Jaskier gravely respects.

“Eskel, stop stalking the bats and come sit with me by the fire.” Jaskier pats the mostly intact log nature has so generously supplied them. It’s only a little rotted at one end, the shattered trunk from whence it came now the prop for Eskel’s swords. From the barren limbs that flank out from the uppermost portion of the tree, Eskel and Geralt’s mares’ tacks and blankets hang while the horses graze at the night-damp grass around them.

The earth gently crunches under Eskel’s boots as the witcher circles the camp one more time to bring him around to Jaskier’s side. He steps over the log and drops down with a creak of wood.

“Are you worried about Geralt? I let him have his wandering time in the night.” Jaskier handwaves at the forest, vague and all-encompassing. Somewhere out there, Geralt of Rivia is creeping around, hunting for moon-blooming flowers and midnight nectar or other less lovely herbs for his and Eskel’s supplies. And Eskel? He’s been left on guard-the-bard duty. Completely unnecessary! Jaskier is very well trained by now at staying safely put. He likes his mortal life, thank you.

“He is far more deadly than anything out there,” Eskel surmises, offering a ragged smile to Jaskier. “I’m only sorry for him as I have the better task tonight and am pretending to be plagued by guilt.”

“Oh?”

Melitele, the difference between brothers; a week into all three of them travelling together and still it delights Jaskier. His songs will bloom with those differences of character; there are vague suggestions that he attend to Eskel for the rest of the season and reunite with Geralt in spring (or, as Jaskier secretly hopes, entreat an invitation to Kaer Morhen so he may enjoy their company and their stories all winter.)

Eskel nods seriously, resuming his prior grave expression as he regards the fire, and across it, the darkness of the wood beyond the reach of their campsite. “Yes; it’d be in poor taste to enjoy your company so shamelessly without Geralt.”

“Oh, I see.” Jaskier plucks a climbing chord progression on his lute, a tip-toeing coquettish flirtation. “You are too noble to boldly enjoy your good fortune when it comes at his expence.”

“You understand me.” Eskel’s refrain from a smile does more good work than the expression would; he persists in his frown, the firelight illuminating the tension of his jowl, the tremble in his mouth.

“Yes.” Jaskier tweaks a squealing note. “What fun is it to play with me when Geralt is not here to watch you enjoy yourself. Or to envy you.” Another note. He peeks at Eskel from the corner of his eye. “Or to envy me my good fortune to be in your lap.”

Eskel huffs, bringing his chin to his knuckled hands, elbows planted on his spread knees. “You understand me,” he says more quietly.

“I understand most things; tis my burden as a man of letters.” Jaskier uses his foot to draw his lute case closer and packs his sweet baby away. “One of my many burdens, if you would believe it.”

“I’m sure you’re beleaguered by burden.”

“Brutally!”

“A brutally beleaguered bard of burden?”

Jaskier laughs gleefully, hand coming down fondly on Eskel’s thigh with a squeeze. “Do you know - well, likely not, I doubt he cared to share his good fortune; oh - it was a game of words that tempted me to Geralt!”

He does not lift his hand nor does Eskel despise its presence on his leg.

“A game of words?”

“Insults, truthfully,” Jaskier pouts.

“Insults are words.”

“Not all.”

“Nor are all words insults.”

“Very true.”

“So what was the insult that tempted you?” For Eskel listened to Geralt call Jaskier a flea upon his back and that had won them great favor from the bard. They have taken each other into their mouths, but what is a cock in the mouth compared to a prick in the heart?

“Oh, just that I’m unrepentantly pathetic and I said, good sir witcher, kind and noble sir witcher, how did you know I am such a man?” Jaskier slips his hand inwards, stroking the seam along Eskel’s thigh. “And do you know what he said to me, dear sir witcher Eskel?”

“Tell me, little one.”

“He said - bard, you’ve begged me to let you suck my cock, what else can I think?”

Eskel laughs. “That’s foul and stupid.”

“I’m also those things.”

“I thought you were a man of letters?”

“Have you not met a learned man dumber than a rock?”

Eskel smiles at him, no game of pretend in the affection on his face. He folds his hand over Jaskier’s delicately questing touch. “I have; and now I suffer a second boon, for I have met such men plenty and am treated to a different kind here tonight.”

Warmth suffuses Jaskier; he can feel it in his face among other parts of himself. What he said was true; twas Geralt’s silly barbs that won Jaskier over to a greater fondness for the witcher, past his refined, well-mannered, scrutinous, and tasteful desire for all things flesh and fantastic, as only fitting a nobleman of learning like himself.

And after that, Jaskier had simply let himself tumble headlong into everything else that pertained to Geralt of Rivia. The gore and beauty of him. The desperation and the strength. Ah, his mind would lose itself to the permanent entrapment of Geralt’s spell on his soul if he let it wander freely the golden land of longing and metaphor.

“Eskel, I’d very much like to kiss you again.”

Golden eyes flick up, ever so slightly, to search the woodline behind Jaskier before they return their glinting weight to stare directly at Jaskier, unflinching. “And I’d like to do more than kiss you, little one.”

That gentle affectionate warmth hits the base of Jaskier’s belly and bursts, blood hot and red. He digs his fingers into Eskel’s thigh for purchase as he leans in to kiss the witcher on his sweetly-snarled lips. The scars are a rough line of skin that Jaskier eagerly runs his tongue over before he suckles at Eskel’s lower lip with an urging noise.

Eskel stays as he is, his hand holding Jaskier’s hand still and steady on his thigh, his other in a fist on his knee. He kisses, or allows the kisses, the barest of pursing lips and sucks.

Jaskier draws back with a huff. “Are you quite sure about that? Because you’re not doing anything.”

Eskel’s head tilts, less like Geralt’s puppyish manner and more...sinuous, more assessing. “I was thinking.”

“And you cannot kiss and think at the same time?” Jaskier does that all the time! Really not that hard.

Eskel hums, regarding him through lowered lids. Sitting, standing, hell, laying on his back asleep, Eskel is immense and always looking down at Jaskier - even Geralt he observes with a tipped head.

“Is that how you kiss Geralt?” The question is edged in a feeling Jaskier can’t place. Jealousy, curiosity? Jest?

Jaskier’s stomach somersaults, still flaring with heat, the source now a twisting thing. “I kiss him as I kiss.”

“As you kiss anyone?” Eskel tilts his head the other way; it is the slow dance of a snake charmer. Or maybe the snake. Jaskier feels both charmed and wary.

“No. Not as I kiss anyone.”

“As you kiss me?”

“Eskel,” Jaskier whines, trying to withdraw his hand, flushed and embarrassed. Eskel tightens his grip on Jaskier’s hand, giving him no retreat. “If you only mean to tease me-”

“Maybe you want to be teased.” He’s smiling again, once again kind-faced. He even kisses Jaskier, a chaste and apologetic peck on his pouting mouth. “A truly troubled troubadour temptingly teased.” Eskel kisses him again, slotting their mouths together and pushing his tongue slowly into Jaskier’s mouth to lick him out, tonsil to eyetooth.

Jaskier sighs on a moan, eyes fluttering open - when had they shut. Eskel kisses him again, firm and dry, sealing Jaskier’s second soft sigh between their mouths.

“Kiss me how you kiss Geralt,” Eskel murmurs. Jaskier opens his eyes, but Eskel has closed his own, holding his mouth to Jaskier’s even as they no longer kiss.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know how you treat him.”

Jaskier swallows, sitting back from Eskel, his one hand still held hostage. Eskel’s grown hard; Jaskier’s able to stretch his fingertips to brush the bulge between his legs. He swallows again, glancing down at it then back to Eskel’s startling face, eyes once more brightly fixed on Jaskier. The first time he’d seen Eskel, it had been with the abject disappointment that he was not Geralt.

“Eskel…” Jaskier tuts his tongue and cups the witcher’s face with his free hand, thumb tapping over his lips. He purses his lips to kiss the whirl of Jaskier’s thumb, eye closing once more as if savoring the contact. “Very well. But I treat him many ways, as he is a man of many manners. And be careful, for not all of his manners warrant kisses from me.”

This earns him a little huff of amusement and the slitting open of a wheaten eye. Such sweet bounty there!

“I shall be wise in my choices.”

“A wise man appreciates his own errors.”

“Shall I choose unwisely?”

“If it suits you to learn from life’s cruelty.” Jaskier taps the hard ridge of Eskel’s scar at the corner of his mouth, the raw end of his cupid’s bow. “There is beauty in that as well.”

“If I’m cruel to you, will you find that beautiful, Jaskier?”

“I make beauty when I cannot find it.”

Eskel opens his mouth and Jaskier tuts again, tapping his thumb in between his lips to press the tip of Eskel’s tongue to his teeth. “Make a choice, Eskel.”

The witcher breathes in a long drag through his nose, tongue held still and drool quickly painting his lips, gathering on Jaskier’s skin, for he slavers for the bard. Wicked victory draws Jaskier’s mouth into a leer even as he pants in eager anticipation for the next words. When Eskel’s tongue twitches, Jaskier withdraws his touch to allow him freedom.

“Kiss me as you would when you see me again on the road.”

“You must tell me the conditions of the weather; is it a market road or am I in a forsaken land? What color am I wearing that day? Is there dirt in my hair or am I succulent with good fortune?”

Eskel rolls his eyes, amused but not wanting to concede. “Kiss me in simple greeting on a simple day of no great or memorable condition.”

“You set the condition yourself; simple - ha! Tis never a simple thing.”

“Kiss me simply.”

Jaskier kisses both of his cheeks. Slowly, feelingly. The electric scrape of stubble.

“You did not kiss him for a long time when you saw him at the Baron’s,” Eskel says.

“Both of you smelled very badly.”

“Kiss me as if I smell very good.”

Jaskier runs his nose up Eskel’s neck; he smells of sweat and horse, dirt and greenish things. Leather and man. “As if?”

He kisses behind the bolt of Eskel’s jaw, that shallow dip of space just beneath the soft lobe of his ear; the skin is very warm and his hair smells potent with natural oil; the smell he would leave on a pillow that Jaskier might roll his face into come morning.

“If I smelled badly?”

“No kisses for a stinky witcher.”

“What if you missed me very much?” Eskel kisses him there, just a wet little lick of his tongue over Jaskier’s lips, more tease than true temptation. So Jaskier pinches his nose and makes an offended face and squints one eye and regretfully pecks Eskel on the mouth. Eskel grins and snags him by the hip, drawing Jaskier closer to him on the log that has become, with growing awareness, less comfortable a perch than before - lots of little jabby bits in the bum.

“What if you’re mad to see me?”

So gently does the slip run from Geralt to Eskel; witcher to witcher. No longer _him_ but _me_.

“How mad? What’s been done? A slight against me?”

Eskel’s eyes wander from Jaskier’s face, considering - they catch on the lute case and spark with an idea.

Jaskier slaps him, not hard, but enough to make a little sound, holding his fingers to Eskel’s face to soothe a soreness that does not exist - all the same, Eskel’s eyebrows climb his hairline and he tilts his head in stern consideration.

“Do not cast your eyes upon my innocent lute. I won’t hear of it even in imagination.” Jaskier wags his finger for good emphasis.

Eskel touches his unstung cheek with a little growl. “Is that your great weakness?”

“An Elven gift from a prodigious day. Should she break, so in me would something break.”

“A frail and easy thing to break.”

“As am I!” Jaskier is proud of his likeness to his lovely lute.

Eskel slowly guides Jaskier’s hand to cup him between his legs, folding Jaskier’s fingers around his proud arousal. Jaskier hisses, biting the tip of his own tongue at the throb in his own cock to feel Eskel’s once more. He leans into the Witcher, greedy, hungry, thrumming.

Testingly, Eskel clenches his grip around Jaskier’s wrist - tis a strong wrist, and the muscle grows up his shaggy forearm, but in Eskel’s hand’s, all of him suffers a delicious delicateness - and so it hurts and Jaskier pants for the hurt, alight with it. Confirming this, Eskel releases him with a little huff, a quirk of his lips, and runs his rough fingertips up Jaskier’s arm, leaping his touch to admire the arch of Jaskier’s brow, to untuck the fringe of his hair that’s nettled there; a gentle sweep of his fingers.

“And here you are with a Witcher on the Path. You’ve chosen an odd way to live your life for a frail and breakable creature.”

“I could say the same for you.” Jaskier lifts a taunting brow, the same that’d been sweetly groomed by Eskel’s fingers, meeting Eskel head-on. Eskel smirks but there’s a tightness in his eyes.

“I am neither of those things.”

“And also a Witcher?”

“I am that.”

Jaskier doesn’t believe him, but that’s for another day, another night. Perhaps a night when it is just they, and he can tend to this wolf as he deserves and kiss him simply and kiss him greatly and kiss him to a frail and breaking thing.

“Then tell me what you are otherwise.” He rubs Eskel’s erection; the sweep of his fingers falls Eskel’s legs wider. Funny. So many differences between the two wolves and yet none at all. They would be petted and pleasured before a fire by his hand just the same. Ah, the problem lies there.

Eskel tarries in silence. Jaskier kisses him for it, pressing his hand to Eskel’s pleasure firmly.

“Aroused?” Jaskier offers with a small laugh.

“I am that,” Eskel rumbles. His hand finally releases Jaskier to his own masterful work and comes to slip up his shirt to stroke calloused and blunted fingers along the small of his back. Jaskier trembles, easy for it, adoring the width of Eskel’s hand as it spans his body.

“Big,” Jaskier puffs, a teensy bit undone and stupid.

Eskel draws back from the kiss to snort in his face, admonishing. “That’s poor form from you, bard.”

“My form is always lovely.” He says this knowing that Eskel will - yes! - wrap both hands around his waist and hug his hips and bottom with an assessing squeeze.

“Fair enough.”

“Only fair? Not lovely? I’m insulted.”

“Was I cruel?”

“You could be crueler, good witcher.”

Eskel’s breath leaves him at the prompt. A week with Jaskier, one errant and erotic night - so many little slips of his tongue and his perfumed arousal at all the right moments. Eskel does not have to stretch his imagination to know what excites Jaskier; how he can lay his hands upon the lovely man to make him cry and sweeten best.

“If I’m cruel to you, Jaskier, will you make it beautiful?”

“I will make it lovely.”

It’s not very hard for Eskel to lift Jaskier from his seat and find them both seated on the ground, Eskel’s back against the felled tree, and Jaskier spread over his lap. Without his armor on, Jaskier’s treated to the dense plushness of Eskel’s body, that mountainous and grand body; even his seat astride the witcher strains his hips as he wiggles to find the right position, his cock rubbed up against Eskel’s stomach, the seam of his ass snug over Eskel’s patient but persistent erection.

“Lucky bastard,” Eskel concludes when Jaskier gives a little roll of his hips, testing out the position. He wraps his arms around Eskel’s wide neck, fingers tangled in his mop of hair.

“Who?”

“Who do you think?” Eskel kisses him, hand firm on Jaskier’s back and traveling south to the line of his breeches. “The wolf out there in the woods.”

“My wolf,” Jaskier agrees even as he tips his head back for Eskel’s roaming mouth upon his neck. “My bastard wolf indeed.”

“Yours?” Eskel knots his fingers in the back of Jaskier’s hair, drawing his neck to a tighter strain. “You claim him?”

“Yes.” He hisses as teeth nip along the column of his throat.

Eskel rumbles with a laugh or a growl - it’s a roll of thunder over his skin. “He has not claimed you.” The pit inside him opens further, an empty place of arousal and need; he bucks against Eskel, grinding into him and down onto him. “I could claim you first.”

“N-!”

Eskel swallows his tongue, sucking it straight from Jaskier’s mouth. It’s only when Jaskier’s protests wane away to a persistent wiggle in Eskel’s lap does the Witcher speak again. “Break you in for him…take you...open you up for him.”

Jaskier pants, pressing his cheek to Eskel’s shoulders as his ass is kneaded. The threat hangs deliciously, plucked from his own sordid mind. Like this, he keenly remembers the soaring feeling of Eskel lifting him from Geralt’s lap, of being held and passed back and forth between the two witchers; the way their bodies sat beneath him like golden thrones, rightly his - ignoble pleasure.

“Would you like that, Jaskier?”

False modesty makes him whine into Eskel’s neck, pretending into his covetting hands.

“I could show you how Geralt likes it,” Eskel murmurs as he runs his lips over Jaskier’s neck and ear, tasting him with the tip of his tongue, the bleeding of arousal, the potency of his smell.

From the first note of his voice, from the first gay jig of his feet and pluck of his strings, Eskel had wanted the spritely man; then, to share him with Geralt? A certain kind of madness held him ever since. This bard, this man, who sang so deeply for his brother - “I could fuck you how I fuck him.”

Jaskier gasps, an escalation of breath; he presses hard to Eskel’s firm body and sinks his teeth into his shoulder, just above the collar of his shirt. “Fuck - I fucking knew it.”

“We let you see it.” Eskel braces him close. “He wants you to see it. I could make you scream how he screams. Ruin you and hand you off for him to lick all better.” Eskel kisses his cheek. “When he gets back to camp, let’s suggest it, little one.”

Jaskier nips his ear with his kitten milkteeth. “As if I’d do it here in the woods.”

“How delicate! Is that why you refuse his cock?” The words land a delicious blow. Jaskier sweats with them.

“No,” he denies, turning feverish in Eskel’s lap. They rut gracelessly, kissing each other’s faces and necks, hands wandering without aim other than caressing skin and gathering goosebumps.

“No? Are you sure, little one? You dance the line between hunger and fear.” Eskel runs his nose along the throbbing vein of Jaskier’s neck. His lips tickle the fine hair along his ear. “You smelled ready for us both that night. I can still feel you clenching on my fingers. See you spreading yourself for us; your body begs to be fucked.” Eskel holds him in place to buck hard against Jaskier’s ass, pulling his hips down into a vicious grind with a low grunt of effort at his own restraint.

Jaskier cannot deny it. But wanting something that he knows will not be given to him and wanting something he can have are two different things. A lesser man would have fucked him already; Geralt has nearly done so when Jaskier’s begged and cried and then fretted all at the same time. He cannot make up his mind and ask the Witcher with unflinching confidence to fuck him, still tormented by the gut-swooping idea of being so vulnerable, of giving so much to Geralt, of what it would mean should he ever lose the Witcher - and so Geralt abstains, content with the torture of Jaskier’s indecisiveness and his own conviction of self-flaggelation.

Jaskier moans; he kisses Eskel widely, sloppily, relishing the other Witcher’s looseness in habit; Eskel feels out his pleasure far more fully than Geralt often allows himself; he kisses openly, hungrily, as if he does not fear the repercussion. Its contrast only makes Jaskier think more fondly of Geralt; he whimpers to think of his wolf missing out on this. He wants to kiss Geralt and wet his mouth.

“What’s that now, little one?”

Jaskier tucks his face into Eskel’s neck with a huff. “I hope you know that I’m kissing you as you, dear Eskel, and not as I kiss my wolf.”

Eskel laughs and pats down Jaskier’s back. With effort, he slows his hips; well, together they slow, as Jaskier has his own twitching need pressed tightly between their bodies.

“I can tell.”

“Can you? Truly? How?”

“Go kiss him yourself and I will tell you how I know.”

Jaskier garbles out his confusion and lifts his head, following the jerking gesture of Eskel’s chin - and there Geralt comes, walking as silent as death into the golden ring of their camp. He casts an untroubled gaze at them, only the faintest pinch between his brows, eyes lazily regarding Eskel and Jaskier entangled in each other’s laps.

It’s not the first time Geralt’s walked in on - well can one be walked in on when out in the woods? Surely not, surely such an act, to walk in on, requires walls or a portico or perhaps a partition? Maybe if the trees were dense and suggested the illusion of - oh, fuck it - Geralt’s opened the door to Jaskier with his face in a woman’s lap more than once. It’s hardly revolutionary to be seen kissing - kissing of all things! - but Jaskier flushes as if he’d been seen bending over and admiring his own asshole with a mirror.

“Hello,” he says dumbly.

Eskel woofs hot ticklish breath into his ear, causing Jaskier to flail. He shoves at Eskel with a dirty look.

“I want no part of…whatever is happening right now,” Geralt says very rudely, dismissing them both. Or only Jaskier, as he makes a motion at Eskel. “Here, for you,” withdrawing from his pouch a bundle of folded and bound grasses or weeds or something medicinal - Jaskier can’t be expected to know everything.

“Thank you.” Eskel is entirely unbothered, in fact, he is entirely still rubbing Jaskier’s ass. “Are you sure you want no part of this? I’ve warmed him up for you.”

Jaskier slaps a hand against Eskel’s chest. “Rude! Cruel! You wolves are all alike. No sense of decorum.”

“You haven't met Lambert yet,” Eskel leers. “He’ll eat you up, little one.”

“Are you mad? They’d maim each other. I’d have a useless bard and an even more useless...whatever Lambert is.” Geralt feeds the fire absently.

Eskel all but cackles.

Geralt only shakes his head at his own thoughts. “Continue, if you’d like. Don’t let me interrupt your good time.”

_Bastard. Only a bastard would pretend to be so daft._

  
“Oh? If you insist, Geralt.” Eskel tilts his head once more, that sharpness returning. His face hardens. He gives Jaskier’s rump a hard smack, eliciting an embarrassing squeak from said useless bard. Jaskier twists his hands in Eskel’s shirtfront, thighs seizing up around the man’s hips. His blood roars in his ears; he can’t bear to turn his face to look at Geralt who surely must be looking at them. Eskel’s attention is fixed over Jaskier’s shoulder, eyes on Geralt, remaining on Geralt, as he presses forward with another kiss to Jaskier’s slack mouth. Eskel’s hand swallows the back of Jaskier’s skull but does so gently even as he licks Jaskier out obscenely, plundering his mouth as if a dragon’ hoard lay behind his teeth.

They hold each other’s eyes, nose tips touching. Jaskier slowly smoulders to ash beneath his burning gaze. “Shall I say: watch, brother, and fuck him in front of you while he cries your name and squirms on my cock?”

For all their joking and playing, Jaskier flushes deeper than ever, killed with the words. He raises a whine of protest, glaring pitifully at Eskel - cruel!

“Eskel." Geralt flashes behind them with something unseen. "Don’t torment him,” Geralt scolds, voice caught between a measured rebuke and a growl of warning. “He’s more delicate than his stupidity and bravery pretend.”

Jaskier’s mortification and his arousal only strength, entwined and wicked and ruining him. Eskel’s head tilts, regarding Geralt, then Jaskier; he cups the bard’s face and kisses his opposite cheek.

“Do I torment you, little one?” His voice wavers with the faintest note of worry.

Jaskier rubs his cheek into Eskel’s hand, needing the comfort, meeting his eyes with all his bravery and his stupidity and his delicacy. “Yes.”

Then he tips their faces together to kiss Eskel, first softly, then with a true bite that he refuses to relinquish, Eskel’s fat lower lip clenched in his teeth, biting until the Witcher pries him off with a thumb in his jaw and the metallic scrape of blood in his mouth.

“Fuck,” Eskel sneers, pinching Jaskier’s face tightly in his massive hand. A sore blooded spot swells on his lip. Eskel rolls his tongue over it, prodding it; he gives Jaskier a rough little shake. “Mean thing.”

Geralt grunts approvingly. Whether at Jaskier’s bite or Eskel’s realized admonishment, it’s not clear.

“A kiss for my tormenter,” Jaskier slurs, words sloppy in Eskel’s grip. All the same, Eskel’s hurt mouth quips in a smile. He gives Jaskier another shake, releasing him. His jaw aches from the hard grip; Eskel could crush him.

“Off with you, little one. Slink to your wolf and bother him.” He slaps Jaskier’s hip again to urge him. The dismissal both excites and embarrasses him; he really doesn't know where his head is tonight.

“No thank you,” Geralt rebuffs, holding up a staying hand that Jaskier ignores. It’s with effort that he gets his legs beneath him and his balance established, feeling storkish and ungainly with both an erection and the stiffness of his knees after sitting so long as he had. He leans down to kiss Eskel one last time, feeling the loss of his warmth and solidness and good company.

“Off with you,” Eskel whispers to him, tilting his face for one last kiss though his eyes are averted.

Geralt grunts when Jaskier drops down atop him, draping himself over Geralt’s back obnoxiously.

“You didn't come to defend my honor,” Jaskier huffs into his hair.

“Eskel’s the only one with honor among us.”

Said Witcher stretches himself onto his bedroll to watch them.

“Not counting yourself, dearest?”

“I keep too much company with you to pretend to have much more than scraps of it.”

“Cruel,” Jaskier laughs, sneaking a kiss onto Geralt’s cheek. He expects to be shoved off, but Geralt endures the affection silently, so Jaskier kisses his cheek again, questing closer to his stern mouth. “Won’t you kiss me, Geralt?”

“No.” There’s a bare smile in his voice. “I am protecting the scraps of my honor.”

“Scraps! Scraps that would not dress a paper cut. Scraps! I would bleed out from a needle prick, such scraps you have for honor. They have no use; discard them, Geralt, and kiss me honorlessly.”

Geralt shakes his head with suffering. “Eskel, you put him into a mood.”

Eskel leers at them from across the fire. “I told you I warmed him up for you.”

Fed up with Geralt’s resistance to his amorous overtures, Jaskier faints down onto Geralt’s bedroll, willing his erection away. “Wolves that live on scraps, what a mangy lot you are. I’m sick of it - I am sick of you both. I’m going to sleep.”

“Goodnight, Jaskier,” says one Witcher.

“Goodnight, Jaskier,” says the other Witcher.

“Yes, yes, goodnight to you both, dear Witchers. Tend the flame with your scraps and keep me warm.”

Geralt throws a blanket over him and gives his arm a squeeze. “Goodnight, Jaskier,” he repeats.

Jaskier reaches for his gloved hand, squeezing Geralt's fingers. In the morning, there will be mint leaves and mint tea and mint kisses.


End file.
